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By Campbell RobertsonThe New York Times • Tuesday May 7, 2013 7:03 AM

The state of Mississippi rejected a request yesterday to submit physical evidence for DNA
testing made by an inmate scheduled to be put to death tonight.

Willie J. Manning, convicted in 1994 of murdering two college students, had been repeatedly
rebuffed in the courts as he sought to have DNA tests performed on certain crime-scene evidence.
But the most-recent requests came about because of two letters sent by the Justice Department to
the prosecutor who handled his trial.

The letters concerned the trial testimony of an FBI expert asked to examine “hair fragments”
found at the scene. The expert testified that in this case he could determine only that the hairs
came from an African-American but that hair-comparison analysis was capable, given better samples,
of matching hair to a particular person.

Manning is black; the murder victims were white. The prosecutor cited this testimony several
times in his closing arguments.

In a letter dated Thursday, the Justice Department said the expert’s testimony about the general
capability of hair analysis was erroneous and “exceeded the limits of the science.” Then, in a
letter dated May 4, the department further said that such analysis could not determine that a hair
came from a person of a certain race, as the expert testified at one point.

The FBI offered in both letters to perform DNA testing on the hair fragments.

Manning’s lawyers argued that these letters constituted new evidence and thus the hairs, and
evidence including a rape kit and fingernail scrapings, should be submitted for testing before the
execution.

In denying the requests, the state attorney general, Jim Hood, said that the letters did not “
represent new evidence,” nor did they repudiate the testimony given by the FBI expert in 1994.

Manning’s lawyers are still lobbying for a stay of execution. On Friday, Manning’s brother and
the Mississippi Innocence Project sued to preserve all the physical evidence for DNA testing even
if he is executed.